Circa Regna Tonat
by varietyofwords
Summary: Chuck and Blair. Set between 4x20 and 4x21 and inspired by the series finale of "The Tudors" because Anne Boleyn thought only with her heart and she got her head chopped off. "And, in any case, I have only a little neck."


**Author's Note: **This attempt to explain what Chuck meant when he said "You have no idea what I have been going through since that night" to Blair in 4x21 is inspired by a scene from the series finale of "The Tudors" (4x10). There are two pieces of dialogue adapted from that scene, but that's about as spoilerish as it gets. However, if you plan to watch "The Tudors", I will not be offended if you pass on this for the sake of spoilers. The title comes from a poem Thomas Wyatt wrote about Anne Boleyn's execution, which he witnessed from the Tower of London, and translates from Latin to "it thunders through the realms". Finally, and most importantly, this was written in honor of the birthday of my lovely co-mod and fellow Anne Boleyn aficionado who also happens to be one of the nicest, most supportive people in fandom. Happy birthday, Dani!

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Amber-colored, pungent, and strong, the liquid pours forth from the bottle and sloshes against the glass as it fills well past the line where he once stopped. The bruised and bloodied knuckles of a greedy hand crack and howl in protest as he raises the full glass to even greedier lips, as Chuck tightens his grip around the glass and twists his lips into yet another frown because his poison of choice no longer burns on the way down. No longer drowns out the relentless aching of his heart as it pounds in his chest; no longer drowns out certain voices in favor of the demons that chant and cheer for him as he stumbles down the path of self-destruction.

Chuck's eyes close again tightly – the skin at the corners scrunching and wrinkling – as one voice raises above all the others, as his heart and hand pound in tandem to the cadence of her shout. And those wrinkles deepen as fragments of that night slice through his consciousness in the same way the glass still embedded in his knuckles tears at bloodied flesh; pain so sharp and focused that his knees buckle and he has no choice but to reach out blindly for something, anything to keep him upright.

The crash of the near-empty glass bottle against the floor causes his eyes to fly open, causes his body to lurch and slam backwards into the wall of empty bottles behind the bar so that his gaze lands not on the broken glass at his feet but rather on the scene frozen in time on the television screen. A young man shown in the glory of his youth, in the height of his power and prestige contrasted with the hobbled fragility of the man he would become so that the thread of commonality between the past and the present are made abundantly clear in this final moment, so that the audience has no choice but to notice how singularly and sadly alone the man obsessed with power and fulfilling his father's legacy was both then and now.

Chuck raises the glass to his lips in one last desperate attempt to wash away the image, to assure himself that he is still capable of feeling something, but the glass becomes frozen mid-lift as the bone chilling air currently curled around him is chased away. His skin prickles under the warmth, under the light source radiating from beside the still broken window yet the shattered glass still littered across the floor causes him to turn cold, to drown the remainder of the contents of the glass in his hands as he barks out his question.

"Why are you here?"

Any remaining hope that she had come to see him, hope that filled him with so much warmth its quick extinguishment had left him beyond cold and frantic is quickly dissipated when she keeps her gaze singularly focused on the television scene, quickly chased away when her voice drops low and fills with disappointment.

"You are becoming him."

Horror spreads through him, burns stronger than the scotch sliding down his throat, and twists his stomach until there is no room left for the alcohol remaining in the glass in his hand. He shakes his head empathically in rejection of her assertion, and he needs not look at her to know that her perfectly manicured eyebrow is arched in reply.

"Do you not have a portrait of yourself in the prime of your life, in the pinnacle of your power surrounded by no one?"

His eyes slide from the screen towards the kitchen, towards where the proofs from the modern royalty photoshoot lie unchosen and rejected in a pile on the counter, but he does not need to lead this room and dig them out of the pile to conjure up the image of him dressed in all black and completely alone. To remember how his quest to keep her for him and him alone backfired; to remember how painful her rejection of him in favor of humdrum Humphrey felt.

Pain only magnified by the way her gaze now feels on his cracked and bruised, bloodied and broken knuckles because it reminds them both of how far he took things, of how he allowed his need and his jealousy and his demons to push him into territory previously and purposefully unknown and unexplored. Her announcement that he is not ready for a relationship, that he will probably never be ready is now etched into his skin so deeply that it almost touches bone; a disgusting and quickly festering wound that has already repulsed the only other person remaining in his life.

"I suppose this makes me your Anne Boleyn for I did nothing to you. I was innocent and yet I was condemned in favor of your legacy."

"No," he snaps in reply as he tears his gaze from the screen to stare at her, to look from the familiar aqua colored dress to the dark hair untamed by a headband to the unblemished skin of her left cheek. "You have never been purely innocent. You went up there and—"

Her face falls even as her gaze remains fixated on his desperate attempt to feel closer to her, to punish himself for ever giving up on watching the finale of this show curled up in bed beside her, to see the whole story and not just the ending. Her face twists with the same ferocious intensity as that of his stomach, and she turns ever so slightly so her dark eyes can cast derisions upon him. But any movement to step forward falters as her heel crushes against glass, and both of them wince at the sound.

"I guess I should be thankful it was my cheek and not my neck. You have always been fascinated with it," she murmurs softly as she reaches up to touch the smooth skin he once lavished with affection. The same skin he tried desperately to bury himself into because only when he feels the heat of her skin against his chilled lips, when he can close his eyes and listen to the pounding of her heart do the demons become silenced and crippled like kryptonite does to Superman.

"And, in any case, I have only a little neck," she states as her hand clamps around her neck, yanks and pulls until the gold necklace he failed to notice originally due to the high neckline of her dress snaps and falls from her neck.

A ring of green remains; a sure sign of cheap jewelry encircles her neck. And she holds the simple, gold chain up in the air just long enough for him to identify it for what it was – a cheap attempt to buy her forgiveness before they would masquerade as a happy couple – before letting to fall to the floor and mix with the slivers of glass resting beneath her feet.

"But it was still large enough for you to taint, wasn't it, Chuck? For you to taint me and taint us when all I ever did was love you. And then you tainted us further."

She turns her head once more until the unblemished becomes replaced with the skin that has been cut by the glass he targeted as the recipient of his anger and frustration and sorrow because he never wanted to hurt her, never wanted the glass to slice anyone but him. Yet while the torrent of the emotions that left his world tilted and on edge meant Chuck failed to anticipated the glass breaking and falling onto to her as it did, he cannot forget the way he grabbed her and forced her onto the bench, cannot forget how he once held her in his arms in a manner that he never should have. And the glass embedded into his hand, the infection slowly encroaching upon the torn skin seems like pitiful and paltry punishments for the worst thing he has ever done.

"All I ever wanted was to be a powerful woman," she informs Chuck as she reaches up to touch the cut, as her fingertips gather up the single drop of blood before it can roll down her cheek. "But now people see this and they see how I'm not powerful, how weak Blair Waldorf is."

The idea that anyone could think that she's not powerful causes his stomach to revolt and his heart to stop beating and his lungs to gasp for air because she is the most powerful woman he knows and yet has no idea how to assure her of that. Words about how she got him, the great Chuck Bass, to tell her he loves her feel vile on the tip of his tongue; reminders that this is not NYU and, therefore, not easily fixed by sending in her application to Columbia and telling her to let the proletariat grumble pound in his head.

"Poor Blair Waldorf," she adds with a sardonic twist of her lips, and Chuck twists away because he cannot bear to watch. He turns his face so his gaze focuses not on the source of light in his life but on the darkness left in her absence that consumes every empty crevice of his penthouse apartment. "She was weak. Like a moth drawn to the flame and burned."

A painful, shallow gasp falls from his lips when she finishes like he is the one being burned; another one falls and slices through the silence that has settled around them both. But Blair refuses to allow him to have the final word, to assure them both that the events of that night and the one before when they were nineteen does not make her weak.

"I told Jenny Humphrey two years ago to be Anne's daughter and not myself, but she did not listen because she did not know how charred my wings would be, how my crown would be bashed and bruised and tarnished. And I should have known better this time because I saw how she was drawn to the flame and—"

"Jenn—" he swallows back the words for even now he can hear her biting commandment that he never utter her name again. "She was nothing."

"Like Eva was nothing? No, Eva was your Catherine Parr. Your redeemer and comfort after your transgressions. Raina was your Catherine Howard. So willing to forsake you for your right hand man. And I suppose Jenny was your Anne of Cleves. Used and cast aside to be your sister. But I—"

"No," he asserts as his hand tightens once more around the glass and his view of New York through the window becomes blurry because none of those other women are on the same par as her. He never wanted them, needed them, believed in them the way he wants and needs and believes in her. Because none of those relationships and hookups and attempts to forget the ache in his soul have been as real or as meaningful as the one he had with her. And he does not want girls off the rack, relationships built on lies and forgotten in the next breath, or poorly constructed copies of her when she occupies such a large part of his world and his heart.

"You are all of them to me. Protective until the end like Katherine of Aragon. Cast in my memory as the pinnacle of perfection like Jane was for him. Willing to remain close even after my folly like Anne of Cleves. Flirty and a breath of fresh air like Catherine Howard. Trusted with every weakness like Catherine Parr."

And although he does not look at her, he can still fill the shift in the air as she sadly shakes her head side to side with every word, with every attempted to explain her in the same terms she had once used whilst she brought him up to date on one of her favorite shows when neither of them know the premiere of the final season would occur after their first finale or that Manhattan would not fall into the Hudson or East Rivers before he made her unhappy. Because the thing he forget when he manipulated her, when he pushed her down and broke the glass within her vicinity was that she was never meant to be a queen consort, a tool in securing his legacy but a queen in her own right with all the power and prestige behind it.

"But I am still your Anne Boleyn, still ultimately weak and powerless. I gambled it all and I lost my heart and I could have forgiven that because the love I bear for you is so great," she rebuts sharply. All the air leaves his lungs and his head hangs as he tries to gasp for air, as he tries to find some way of denying the truth. "But you've hurt me too many times, Chuck, and you made it so everyone knows how weak and powerless I am. I won't – I can't stay here and risk losing my head."

The bone chilling air curls back around him until his skin prickles over the loss of the light and warmth once cast upon him, and his world tilts rapidly as the center becomes nothing more than a dark and empty void.

"Blair, please, don't—" Chuck cries out as he turns to face her, as he turns to see she has disappeared like the shadow of a dream with only the shattered glass of the window constructed to separate the living room and his bedroom remaining.

The jagged, broken mess becomes reflected in his face, is mirrored in his heart, and continues to haunt him even as he raises the glass of scotch to his lips. But the glass embedded in his hand tears at his skin further with his movements and he tips the glass – droplets of scotch falling softly to floor – in order to stare at the physical reminder of his own weaknesses, of how he allowed Blair to think loving him – demons and failures and all – means she is doomed to share the same fate as Anne Boleyn and, therefore, is anything less than the most powerful woman he has ever known.


End file.
